Carl Kirwan believes the time is ripe for London Welsh to claim their first win of the season at Edinburgh tomorrow, writes Matthew Bruce.

The Exiles are still yet to avoid defeat so far this season in any competition, but showed signs of improvement in recent matches against Leicester Tigers and Northampton Saints.

And flanker Kirwan believes that now is the time for Welsh to convert those improved performances into results.

“We desperately want to come back from Edinburgh with a win, nothing else is good enough,” he said.

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“It’s always a big game against Edinburgh in European competition and I personally am looking at it as a massive game.

“We need results now. We’ve shown a lot of improvement in some of our recent matches and I think that if we put in a good enough performance the result will follow.”

Kirwan admitted that confidence has been an issue after such a poor start to the season, but said that recent display had restored some important self-belief.

And he feels that success against Edinburgh during the next fortnight could act as a springboard to kick-start Welsh’s faltering Aviva Premiership campaign.

“It’s hard to get to this point in the season and not have a win and I think confidence is always going to take a knock,” Kirwan said.

“But we’ve all been grafting in training because we want to put it right.

“We need to get some momentum behind us now, which we can then take into the league.

“I think the recent games against Leicester and Northampton showed a massive improvement and we want to keep that going.

“It’s our aspiration to start playing some good rugby and hopefully install some confidence into the team.”

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